1. Technical Field
This invention relates to an optical fiber cable; and more particularly relates to an indoor/outdoor optical fiber cable that meets various competing industry standards such as peak flame, peak smoke, average smoke, compression and cold temperature bend tests.
2. Description of Related Art
Campus cables are known in the art and include four (4) categories, such as outdoor, outdoor-riser, riser and plenum cable designs. Balancing the industry specifications with current demand, results in strategic performance targets for such cables which include flame peak, smoke peak, average smoke, cold bend, compression, and temperature cycling attenuation.
Campus cables with components made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) have a difficult time consistently passing the average smoke requirement for the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) 910 test; while cables with components made of polyvinylidene fluorides (PVDF) generate very little smoke but do not process well when pressure extruded around fiberglass yarns.
Existing yarn-matrix units with or without water swellable powder are not flame and smoke retardant. Some yarn-matrix combinations exhibit low smoke and relatively low flame but do burn easily and are not considered flame retardant.
In the prior art, when running cable between buildings, an indoor plenum cable is used in combination with an outdoor cable. One of the major disadvantages of this approach is that the indoor plenum cable must be spliced to the outdoor cable and the cost of splicing is more expensive than the actual cost of the cable.